What's Love Got To Do With It?

Channeling Tina Turner this morning…

A few days ago I posted a list of characteristics of the church by Dave Black. As I said I like his list a lot. I also promised to give you a look at a list I like a whole lot less. The list I found troubling comes courtesy of the Resurgence, one of the arms of Mars Hill and ultimately Mark Driscoll and carries the bold title of 8 Biblical Marks Of A True Church. No surprise, it turns out that all of the marks are what Mars Hill is already doing.

At the outset I have to say that while what is going on at Mars Hill it doesn’t impact me personally, it does impact the church both locally with those in fellowship at the various Mars Hill campuses as well as globally through those that are influenced by Mark Driscoll around the world. I look westward with a growing sense of alarm, the sort of alarm that can only come from someone who has come out of a highly authoritarian, controlling and hierarchically cultic setting. When someone frequently brags about firing people and chortling about the trail of bodies he has left in his wake of those who didn't get with his program, warning bells and flashing lights should be going off. When a local church starts absorbing and assimilating other local churches, firing staff and driving away people who refuse to be assimilated, what is happening might be "successful" but it isn't the church.

Even the title "Biblical Marks of a True Church" reduces the church into a bunch of local, autonomous groups that are only loosely linked together with a linkage that is barely there in theory and completely absent in practice. Asking “what is a church” without first asking “what is the church” puts the cart before the horse. Unless we grasp what the church is globally and universally, in her entirety, we will never understand and correctly practice church community locally. Mars Hill in Seattle is not an independent local church, or at least it shouldn’t be. It should be a local expression of a larger community, one more concerned with the health of the church around the world than it is with preserving its own identity and snatching up other struggling “local churches” to be assimilated.

As you peruse this list, you will find a lot of the typical stuff: "preaching", authoritarian leadership, "sacraments" and "church membership", but something is obviously missing. The vital characteristic of the church that is absent from this list, and many others, is love. Such a simple thing and yet so crucial to the life of the church. Still we find list after list where love is not mentioned other than in passing. Even the vaunted 9 Marks, a list that spawned a ministry, doesn’t list love as one of the 9 mark of the church. Preaching? Oh yes, we must have that! So called sacraments? Can’t have a “real” church without them! Love? Well that is just sort of assumed and implied. I mean I obviously love my fellow Christians, at least the other members of my church, because I grace them with my presence on Sunday and I dress myself and my family up to impress them.

What does it mean that so many people are convinced that the church either is already loving one another in spite of the evidence to the contrary or that it isn't as imortant as adherence to all manner of manmade reigious traditions? When we don't even consider love or unity or self-sacrifice to be an essential of the church, doesn't it mean that our view of the church is horrible distorted? We cannot have a "biblical true church" if we are missing these crucial characteristics. I don't care how exegetically sound the preaching or how conservative the attire or how detailed the statement of faith, if you don't have love you are not manifesting the church. Some of these other things are important (and many are not) but they all come in a distant second to love.

Jesus said to His disciples and by extension to us:

By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." (John 13:35)

If that is true and it most certainly is, then the opposite is also true. If we don't love one another people will not recognize us as His disciples. Perhaps that explains why the world doesn't persecute us in the West because the world doesn't even recognize who we claim to be. I have come to a point where I would rather fellowship with a "liberal" Christian that loves his brothers and sisters than a "conservative" Christian who sees his brothers and sisters as people to be made to conform to man-made rules.

The church was birthed in the supreme act of self-sacrificial love and loving God and one another is the top priority of the church. Anyone who fails to recognize that and give love its proper place of prominence frankly doesn't understand the first thing about the church and really has no business declaring what are or are not the "marks of a biblical church".

Cults and cult-like behavior

In most of orthodox Christendom, we know the cults. Some are questionable (seventh-day adventists) and some are obviously cults (mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses. We reject their claims, point out their divergence with orthodox Christianity, seek to witness and evangelize to win them to Christ. But sometimes false teachers are harder to spot. Some of them are even brothers in Christ.

There are some groups and movements within the church who would affirm the basic and most important tenets of Christianity: infallibility of the Scripture, the deity of Christ, justification by faith alone. Yet they still exhibit signs of a cult. How to deal with Christians who affirm thee truth but by their actions and attitudes seem to be somewhat amiss?

- Taking doctrines to extremes

Movements with cultic tendencies tend to be highly extremist, to the point that their extremism becomes a badge of honor (this is not the same sort of extremism that Barry Goldwater was speaking of). If there are problems in the church, find the most radical, most extreme reaction to problems, both real and perceived. There is a difference between reform and overreaction. That extremism makes radical separatism easier.

- Overly separatist

A similar issue is one of extreme, radical separatism. Our movement is the only true remnant of the true faith left. Everyone else falls into three camps: unbelievers, heretics or deceived. While I have many disagreements over various doctrines with other Christians (charismatics and tongues, Presbyterians and infant baptism, Lutherans and sacramentalism) I also recognize them as fellow believers with whom I have disagreements. Many people look at Together for the Gospel as a terrible thing because someone must be compromising. You have Baptists, Presbyterians and Charismatics all on the same stage sharing a microphone. Someone must have compromised! The reality is that the T4G brethren recognize and acknowledge that they have serious and substantive differences with one another in doctrine and practice, but that doesn’t lead inexorably towards forced separatism. In other words, we can still sing together, pray together and sit under the preaching of the Word together, even if we wouldn’t be members of each others church. What helps out radical separatism is when you get the volatile mixture of spiritually immature people and a forceful leader.

- Led by individuals with forceful characters

Men (typically) with forceful and strong personalities are normally at the forefront of these movements. These men often can lead others and bring them under conviction by sheer will power and confidence. I have a knack for being able to make even a really outlandish statement or something I know nothing about sound convincing by saying it confidently and forcefully. Not everyone who is forceful and certain is a cult leader, but I would say that every cult leader has a forceful personality.

My intent is not to name names or peg certain groups because it is hard to pin down. Is every church that holds to King James Onlyism bordering on cultic? Certainly not! But are there many KJVO churches and many individuals who are, holding to a double inspiration doctrine? Absolutely! The same is true with house church people. Some are just honestly unable to find a Bible believing church, or perhaps can’t make it to church during normal church hours. But others look askance and even sneer at anyone who goes to the “steeple house” as being a false convert or woefully deceived. And the same is true of charismatics. Not everyone in the charismatic movement is a moonbat, but there are plenty who are charmin’ snakes, barkin’ like dogs and rolling around on the floor. Heck there are people who hold to Reformed theology that act cultic at times, normally by so narrowly defining who is or is not Reformed that they make a pretty small island of the true followers of John Calvin.

It is a fine line between fervent belief and cultic behavior sometimes.